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snowyslytherinowl · 8 months

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Joyous Nightmares - Part 3

PAIRING: Severus Snape x (Professor) Reader

SUMMARY: A year after surviving the Second Wizarding War, Severus Snape begins to have joyous nightmares where he dreams of having a wife and a daughter. These dreams bring him nightmares because he doesn't believe that he'll ever get married or have a family of his own. So what happens when the wife in his dreams is revealed to be you?

Warning: Nothing graphic, but Severus’s near-fatal attack by Nagini is described. Angst and nightmares once more.

Part 1 | Part 2

*GIF isn't mine, unsure of credit

Sleep overcomes an unwilling Severus that night. Dreams also invade his sleep since his dreamless sleep potions haven’t finished brewing.

Nighttime approaches as Severus walks down the path toward Hagrid’s hut. He wonders if his daughter had fun with the gamekeeper that day. His question is answered when the door of the hut bursts open and she comes running towards him. For a five-year-old, she runs amazingly fast.

“Daddy, Daddy! Hagrid showed me unicorns and hippogriffs!” she shouts. Practically launching herself at his legs, she grasps the fabric of his trousers and points at Buckbeak. “He let me pet Buckbeak too!” The gamekeeper emerges from the hut and approaches the pair, smiling.

“Oi, Professor Snape! Sorry. I didn' mean ter let her run out o' the house, tha' one.” he apologizes. “Yer daughter is a sweet little girl.”

“Thank you for watching her and showing her your creatures, Hagrid. She has been excited to play with the live versions of her toys for a long time.” He smiles down at his daughter and cocks his head in Hagrid’s direction. “Sweetheart, what do you say to Hagrid?”

“Thank you!” she says and hugs Hagrid’s legs as she smiles sweetly up at him.

“O' course, little one,” he replies and pats her affectionately on the head.

Severus’s daughter grabs his hand and they walk back to Hogwarts together. Along the way, she rambles about every creature she petted and fed. Severus warmly smiles at his daughter’s excitement. Several students stare as Severus passes by them with his daughter in tow. “Should you not be returning to your houses?” he sneers at them to protect his reputation as the harsh dungeon bat. The students quickly scamper away and Severus beckons his daughter to their quarters.

He pushes the door open to the sound of music playing from a small radio and fire crackling from the fireplace. Water rushes from the shower and Severus’s daughter is about to open the bathroom door when he stops her. She looks disappointed, but he reassures her, “Wait for Mummy to finish her shower and I will warm up milk for you. All right?”

She nods and jumps onto the sofa. He searches the fridge for milk as the bathroom door creaks open, revealing you in pajamas. “Hi. I thought I heard you two coming in. How was Hagrid’s, sweetheart?”

“He showed me unicorns and hippogriffs!” she gushes. A unicorn plushie flies into her hands and she changes the body of the unicorn to have a yellowish tint. “One of them looked like Angel, but she was a baby so she was yellow.”

“How cute is that!” you say enthusiastically. “Next time we can look at them together!” The both of you giggle and Severus smiles as he turns on the stove. He warms the milk for his daughter and when he hands it to her, he finally notices her features. She has his black hair while every other feature mirrors yours: the eyes, nose, lips, and cheeks. Soon after she finishes the milk, her parents wash her and put her to sleep.

Once Severus changes into his nightclothes, he cuddles with you in bed. Water remaining from your hair wets his shirt, but he doesn’t care. He focuses on how he can feel your breasts through the thin fabric of your pajamas and how your legs are practically fused to his. He tilts his head down and sees you looking down at him. “Are you tired?” you whisper and move your hand from his jaw to his chest. You take more time tracing your hand down his stomach and where he needs it most while wickedly batting your eyelids at him.

“Not when your hand is all over me.”

You laugh softly and kiss his neck. “Then let’s stay up a little longer.” You swing one leg fully over his leg and lower your body onto him. Severus tilts himself upwards and presses a kiss onto your lips.

A whirlwind of emotions runs through Severus, but the emotion that prevails is longing. He considers you to be a friend and has never recognized that perhaps, he does harbor romantic feelings for you. You have the sweetest smile, the gentlest eyes, and the most beautiful laugh. How was he such a fool not to realize the true meaning of the warmth enveloping him whenever you laugh? And Merlin, that dream. He selfishly wishes it had carried on so he could feel your body enveloping his.

Then a sense of guilt hits him. You see him as a friend and nothing more, for Merlin’s sake. He’s ashamed that he dreamt of you in such a way. How can he possibly sit next to you in the Great Hall in a few hours and look at you like nothing has happened? The worst part is that you won’t even know why he’s ignoring you. But it’s better this way; he can’t fathom the look of disgust on your face if you knew that he dreamt of your hands roaming over his body. You’re too good, too kind for this. Especially since you just offered to accompany him to Hogsmeade and the Black Lake.

This is too much for him to handle and his body begins to shake. Tears run down his cheeks and sobs wrack his body. The nearest vase becomes the victim of his emotions as he throws it at the wall, shattering it into porcelain shards. He kicks a messy pile of books and they go flying, knocking down other items they’ve hit. He grabs his wand and explodes a glass jar, spilling its contents everywhere. Severus attempts to calm himself by balling his fingers into a tight fist until his knuckles go white and blood is drawn from the fingernails pressing his palm. Slow, shallow breaths escape him, but they do nothing to calm his internal state.

Finally, he collapses onto the bed, head between his hands, and allows the emotions of all the dreams to overtake him once more. A selfish part of him wishes that he truly did have a daughter that looks like you. Wishful thinking, that is, considering that you’d never dream of dating him, let alone marrying him.

A knock sounds on the door, startling Severus. He swallows his sobs and wipes his eyes with his hands. Though, whoever is on the other end knows he’s inside since they knock more insistently this time. He attempts to ignore them again. Cold chills run down his body when he hears their voice. “Severus, I know you’re in there! Please, open up!”

It’s you. What a fool he is for forgetting that you’re patrolling the corridors tonight. He doesn’t know what to do. Leave you at the door or face the one person he never wants to face again? Who is he kidding? He wants to see you more than anyone in the world, but he has to push you away. Then again, it would be cruel to you to completely ignore you, so he settles on shouting, “I am fine! You can leave!”

“Stop lying to me! I heard crashes in there!” Usually, your voice is gentle and kind; now, you sound insistent and a little desperate. A pang of guilt hits him once more, so he swings the door open.

The light from your wand shines onto Severus, causing him to shrink back in an attempt to hide his puffy red eyes. With the way you’re staring at him, you must think of him as an ugly, pitiful creature. “Oh, Severus. What happened? I’ve been worried about you for so long! Please, talk to me,” you beg and you sound like you’re on the verge of tears. How sweet you are for caring so deeply about him.

“I… I…” he stammers and you draw your head back to look at him expectantly. He quickly breaks eye contact and points at the smashed jar and its contents oozing on the floor. “I am upset because I dropped my favorite potion ingredient.”

You raise your eyebrows at him. “I don’t believe you.” The concern is still there, but he feels like a silly schoolboy being caught in a lie.

Sighing, Severus whispers, “What do you want me to say?” He wishes you would leave him to his thoughts and accept his lies, but Merlin you will not give up. It would be so much easier for you to stop caring about him.

“The truth,” you say and let go of him. He misses the warmth of your hug, but you soon take his hands into yours. Blood reddens his normally pale skin and he’s thankful that your wand is pointing downward so you can’t see his face too well in the darkness. “You don’t know how horrible I feel every time you walk into breakfast dead tired like you’re an inferi or something. Sure, you’re grumpy most of the time, but you snap at the students more than usual. I know something is wrong and it kills me that you won’t talk to me about it. I’m your friend and I promise that I won’t judge you.”

“Yes, you will,” he grunts and tears reform in his eyes. Get a hold of yourself, Severus tells himself. He blinks away the tears and retracts his hands.

“What?”

“You will judge me,” he whispers. “You have no idea what I have been thinking and you would be revolted if you knew.”

“You’re wrong.” You sound more determined as you speak. “I’ve always known that you’re a good person even if your tongue is sharp. When you killed Dumbledore and took over as Headmaster, the other professors and staff members would rip you apart behind your back. I never partook in that. I knew that you were serving as a double spy and that every deed you did was so we could win the war. No matter what happened, my belief in you has never wavered. So whatever this is, I don’t think it can be worse than pretending to be a Death Eater.”

He turns around and steps toward a shelf without the broken glass so you can’t see the tears falling out of his eyes because of your utter devotion to him. How could he go through with his plan of ignoring you when you’re so loyal to him? Caution is thrown to the wind when Severus confesses, “I have been having nightmares. In these nightmares, I dream that I have a wife and child.”

A pause fills the air and Severus finally looks you in the eye. You look somewhat relieved now that he’s confided in you, but your face has fallen. “Do you not want to get married and have kids?”

A year ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated to give a firm, indefinite “no.” Now, though? He supposes he does. A wife and child would certainly fill the loneliness he’s forever had in his heart. “I do. It is only that I…” he hesitates, “I do not believe that I will ever get married or have children.”

“Why’s that?”

Embarrassment burns at his cheeks and more tears threaten to spill from his eyes. Oddly, this feels worse than that moment by the Black Lake with Lily. It feels like you’re forcing him to confess how he feels for you, how he’s just realized that he longs for you no matter how genuine and supportive you seem to be. “Do not make me say it.”

“I don’t understand,” you say. Honesty fills your eyes, beckoning him to open up to you.

“Look at me. No woman would want to marry, let alone date me,” he says and he gestures at himself. He runs a finger along his greasy hair and hooked nose to demonstrate his point that he’s a hideous dungeon bat. A dry, humorless laugh escapes him in the hopes of lightening the mood.

“That’s not true,” you reply and step toward him. In the dim light from a glowing insect in a jar, Severus can see your eyes and the look in it is something he can’t decipher.

“I appreciate your words of consolation, yet they are nothing but a white lie,” he scoffs and turns away from you.

“They aren’t,” you whisper. You step towards him cautiously, in case he’ll swat you away. But he doesn’t. You move to him until you’re so close that he can feel your breath on his face.

For a second, Severus wishes that you’d kiss him. She would never want to do that, he thinks to himself. His cheeks redden in embarrassment at his inappropriate thoughts.

But your face is moving ever so close to him, and then you’re getting on your tippy toes, and your lips are hovering right next to his, and you finally kiss him. His head spins as your hands cup his face and pull him impossibly closer to you. He doesn’t know where to put his limp arms, how to breathe, or why you fancy him, but all that matters is the exhilarating feeling of your soft lips against his chapped lips.

You finally release him when you need air, but you lean your forehead against his and breathlessly laugh. With his newfound ability to move, he places his hands on yours and laughs with you.

Eternity seems to pass as you stare at each other until Severus whispers, “When?”

You understand without clarification and you tell him, “I don’t really know. I guess I always found you handsome.” Severus rolls his eyes and opens his mouth in response, but you silence him with a quick kiss. “I don’t want to hear any of it,” you say and kiss his nose. If you’re willing to kiss his nose, then perhaps he shouldn’t feel so insecure about it.

“After the battle, I noticed that you were missing from the Great Hall. I walked through the area with the wounded at least twice and I couldn’t bring myself to look at the dead until I had to. It was when I couldn’t find you amongst the dead either that I finally realized how I felt for you. I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I missed out on the opportunity to tell you how I feel,” you whisper and give a dry laugh. If Severus wasn’t listening intently, he wouldn’t be able to hear your low voice. “But when you were healing, I didn’t want to burden you with how I felt. And then I guess I was too shy.”

Unbeknownst to Voldemort, Severus carried the antidote to Nagini’s venom wherever he went. When Voldemort left the Shrieking Shack and he gave his memories to Potter, he poured the vial down his throat and healed his bite wounds. The loss of blood knocked him out until the battle was won and even when he regained consciousness, he could barely find the energy to move. Although he eventually managed to apparate to an unoccupied building in Hogsmeade, he realized he wouldn’t be welcome amongst the others at Hogwarts. A desolate street seemed to be the best place to hide and he slumped along a wall, allowing himself to regain his strength.

Then he heard your voice calling out for him. At first, he thought he had fallen asleep and he was dreaming of you. But when you crouched in front of him and inspected his body for wounds, he vaguely recognized you as a real, living being. He didn’t question why you were looking for him or why you didn’t kill him as you apparated him to St. Mungo’s. Sometimes he pondered those questions, but he never asked you why.

“I am glad you found the courage to say something now.” Severus brushes a loose strand of hair behind your ear and initiates the kiss this time. Gaining confidence with your confession and previous kisses, he lets his hands roam down your body until they rest on your waist. As his tongue slips between your lips, he thinks that he will never get tired of this delightful feeling.

XXX

Soft breaths sound around the bedroom. Severus feels your chest rising and lowering as you sleep cuddled against his body. One arm is wrapped around you and supports your head, while the other gently soothes the baby sleeping on his chest. He knows your daughter can’t sleep with her parents in bed for now, but he wants to enjoy comforting his child before he puts her in her crib.

The view outside the window isn’t the same as the one in his dreams; the grass outside is green and the flowers grow in beds around the yard, but other cozy houses surround his own. But perfectly recreating his joyous nightmares into a reality years later doesn’t matter to him. All that matters is that he has the two of you and that his joyous nightmares no longer haunt him; they only bring him joy.

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